This world is inhabited by creatures that we call pokemon. People and pokemon live together by supporting each other, but now the scourge threatens the safety of the entire region. Kohaku has become a dangerous place, where children stay at home and only brave souls go adventuring.
Welcome to KOHAKU. Come for the nightmares. Stay for the tea and crumpets.
The season is SUMMER. It is easy for survivors to forage for food from the land, as there are entire abandoned farms ready for harvest. On the downside, you can smell the corpses.
swarms
GRAND OPENING !
Welcome to KOHAKU REGION's grand opening! If you're interested in joining, come check out our grand opening giveaway!
karimi left decima town to stumble into a hesperia bar. she gets drunker than she has been in a year. it results in unpleasantness for everyone involved.
"y'know, maybe melchior would actually bother to return veronica dearest's calls if only she'd - yanno, offer more than the occasional food package to the town that he's trying to keep from sinking into the ground"
normally karimi wouldn't be sitting here in hesperia, stirring up trouble with the only ally that her hometown's probably got. normally karimi would be trying to keep her head down as much as possible while she gathered some information on the situation in hesperia.
she can't do it anymore. not after what she's seen in mefitis underground, and especially not after the fifth glass of alcohol. the bartender can't even pretend to be sympathetic anymore. that kind of happens when you walk into a bar to shit talk their gym leader-slash-mayor.
there is shouting amongst the bargoers. lots and lots of shouting. something along the lines of 'how dare you'. karimi doesn't care. she's too far gone to care. "oh, fucking spare me" she hisses, her voice uncharacteristically cold. "at least you have a city to be bickering over. i can only imagine the scourge problems that you'd be having right now if melchior hadn't sacrificed his town and saved your sorry, undeserving asses--"
the scene is about to erupt into a fight. let them come.
it was a quiet night, a mixed crowd in the bar as ahuda nurses a drink on a stool off to the side. normally she'd be more careful than to drink anything stronger than a glass or two of wine; nowadays, though, she simply wants to knock back a drink and lose herself in the haze.
her plan works perfectly, of course, until there's a shifting in the crowd, becoming something akin to a beast as the people work themselves up. ahuda can barely hear them over the cotton wrapped around her brain and plugged into her ears, but she can see that they're angry, now. over what, she doesn't know. until madonna is kind enough to point out that it's karimi that they're angered over, and that it's her that the drunk crowd wants to have blood of.
she stands up, her stool clattering to the ground drowned out by the now-mob's. the bartender doesn't look like he'll be interrupting - he's angry at the researcher as well, it seems - and ahuda slides in next to karimi, voice low and hopefully audible even in this din. "karimi, i think that's enough," she murmurs. madonna - she'd evolved into a mienshao in hespera - stands perfectly still but ready, weight on the balls of her feet.
all the blood is going to her brain, and when she turns her angry glare on ahuda, she's not even sure if she should be mad at the ranger or not. does she remember? "oh, don't you get on my case now." she downs a shot glass belonging to another patron, uncaring about what she's even drinking. vodka, maybe. "stay out of my way if you know what's good for you."
it's not just the alcohol, though. karimi's anger is very much real.
"my people are starving and dying to keep the scourge out of the only basement that they have left, and y'all have the gall to defend the fact that veronica's just been sitting on her cushy ass for the past year?" karimi climbs onto a table and stands with the power of one imbibed with liquid courage. "is it 'cos melchior is still giving out badges to every idiot trainer who comes his way? god forbid he'd stop. then maybe someone will actually start giving a shit."
actually, that might not be a half bad idea. closing down the gym until the town was freed - they might be able to do it in a week.
some of the bargoers are eos trainers. they stand up. karimi doesn't care - she's on the high ground. table. whatever. her legs start to wobble. karimi wisely decides that she doesn't like the high ground very much and gets off. she doesn't like being at eye-level with these idiots, though.
"fuck you all anyway." she spats out. "i don't fucking drink with cowards." because all the brave souls are dead. they're dead, and no amount of dreaming is bringing them back.
karimi storms outside with a dozen eyes on her. her face is greeted with the residual chill of march as she tells herself not to cry. nette
ahuda isn't drunk enough to not hear karimi's demand, nor is she so out of it that she misses the way that the woman flips tables and spits curses before storming out. but she's just drunk enough that her blood is pounding in her head and muffling the crowd, and the ranger slips out from the bar before the people in there connect her presence with karimi's.
the air is a deliciously cold slap to the face, and she sighs at the bar's doors. then madonna is tugging her sleeve away from the threshold, in the general direction where karimi had gone. when she catches up with her, ahuda dips her hands in her pockets and tries not to sway. "difficult night?" she asks mildly. the ground is tilting beneath her feet but she holds steady.
pokemon... she looks at the mienshao and remembers. pokemon. those were usually a good idea.
karimi fumbles for a pokeball, any pokeball. with a flash of light, an eelectross appears. he doesn't even seem rattled upon seeing his trainer in such a state. instead, he puts steady hands around her, supporting her weight with his tubular body and levitation powers.
QiCZIOPJ <50 karimi throws up
she manages to keep her stomach fluids down, but just barely. maybe it had been more than just five drinks.
"c-camus..." she blinks the tears out of her eyes. "i...i want to go home..." except there is no home, not for the children of decima. the eelectross looks to her with sympathy.
ahuda deserves some explanation. <...we just came back from decima town. mefitis underground.> nette
the eelectross gives ahuda some comfort even as she struggles to keep herself standing and not swaying to the side. arceus, she hasn't even had that many shots... right? really, she'd lost count somewhere.
"ah. that sucks." she'd like to talk some more, maybe express sympathy, but her world's spinning and madonna barely manages to catch her before she falls.
"but heh, i don't have a home anymore. or at least, not one that stays in one place, anyway." arceus, what is she saying? but the words tumble out of her mouth. she's certainly drunk enough for that. "i don't think i can claim ceres as it... anymore."
then on a completely unrelated note, madonna speaks up. <do you at least have somewhere to stay for tonight?> the mienshao had always been of the mothering sort.
karimi feels absolutely sick. she feels sick in her head and sick in her heart. like she has somewhere to be, but she's not actually there.
"you don't...don't live in a airship...do you?" that seemed to fit ahuda's description. karimi is deeply confused. "oh...ceres. it's still...it's still standing."
ceres seems pretty enough. inhabitable enough. it's not...it's not anything like decima. juturna is a place that people can still laugh in. smile in. decima can have none of those things. decima is--
her tears are bitter. she wishes that she had never gone to juturna. she wishes that she had never gone to bacchus. she shouldn't have been there, not while her home still rots. karimi starts hiccuping uncontrollably, and she doesn't even care if the whole world hears. strong, steadfast karimi. capricious, unreliable karimi. she doesn't care to be the either of them anymore. she just -- she just wants --
she wants a dream that nobody else is dreaming.
she is alone.
"should never have joined eos" she breathes. "should have stayed. should have found everyone before they died. should have been fighting for them."
camus does her best to prevent karimi from falling on ahuda. he's quiet for a few seconds. <...charities towers, most likely. doesn't seem like the hesperia gym is a good idea anymore.>
"fuck eos!" roars a drunken researcher to the night. camus wraps himself tightly around his trainer, but she falls down anyway, eelectross and all.
"it's still standing, but... i have no place there." not if she wants to protect her family. not if she wants to stop them from becoming what she is.
(a murderer)
"no right," she mutters, and doesn't notice karimi speaking too quietly, nor the eelectross. it's only when the researcher shouts that she jolts, stumbles back in surprise, madonna only barely keeping her from falling down on her ass. passerby shoot worried, angry glares at them both, eos supporters the most violent of them all but all staying back at the sight of vaccinated pokemon.
(it wouldn't be the first time that someone had broken, even eos, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.)
"but you're eos, aren't you?" ahuda laughs. it's coming straight from her drunken heart, and it sounds hysterical. or perhaps like a madwoman's cackle. "can't fuck it if you're in it. no, you're stuck with us now." she knows she's being unnecessarily cruel, but fuck it she's drunk and she'll say what she wants.
"not worse than me, though. pro-probably not. most likely not. definitely not." she giggles, and finally falls down despite her mienshao's best efforts. if she happens to land next to karimi, then it's by some expert maneuvering by the pokemon.
<we have a room at an inn. there aren't any rooms left, but there is a spare bed in ours. you are welcome to stay at our place for the night.>
"if it's a real home then you'll...you'll always have a place there." she says simply. it seemed like common sense to a girl from decima in the way that looking both ways before crossing the street seemed like common sense. that's good advice too. "don't forget to look both w-ways before crossing the street."
"don't care about fucking it when none of the recruits are even hot anymore. except a few i guess." she'll admit that much. not much time for that kind of thing, not when the end of the world comes so near. and then ahuda lands next to her and karimi squints at her suspiciously. ahuda is eos too, isn't she? fuck, so is she. she's eos. the both of them are eos. what miserable, pathetic people they are.
"not... not when i can kill them by just being there." the threat that the agent had given her is real. it is utterly, utterly real in her mind, even if it had been issued in a nightmare. even if she had killed him already. she isn't so out of it that she doesn't think the partner won't crawl out of whatever woodwork it had burrowed into and carry out the threat. "gengars are... are dark types, right? they can... probably do it."
"some... some of them, yeah. like kaz. kaz is cute." he is. she's still giggling. arceus, this feels wrong, but it feels so right. she doesn't know what to think anymore.
her laughter sputters out and she lays her head on the ground. the sky is blurry. has it always been that funny shade of white? she can't tell.
"well so can i, but you don't see me crying about it." karimi lays her head against her eelectross' rubbery body. "camus is like...the deadliest eelectross in aaaaaalllll of kohaku." or possibly the only eelectross in all of kohaku. there didn't seem to be that many around. maybe they were rare. maybe they all died from the scourge as tynamo. tynamo weren't terribly powerful pokemon.
aw, that's way too depressing to think about. everything's depressing these days. depressing and dark--
"no!" the researcher looks almost offended. "no, it's ghost and...poison type! and...and camus can take care of 'em easy...camus can beat back all the monsters..."
the eelectross almost looks embarrassed despite the pain of being crushed under his trainer.
"you're cute too!!" she practically yells, because it's the truth and there's not many truths in kohaku these days. "you're cute and neo is cute and that ranger with the mawile that i met at pax was cute." what...what was his name again? was it kaz? no, kaz was...some dude that she met in a city somewhere...he was probably cute...yes, he is cute, karimi decides.
"...oh. i-i could've... sworn that they're dark types." the last time she'd checked, anyway. isn't it pathetic that a ranger doesn't know her pokemon? ahuda thinks so. "i don't doubt it, though. c-camus is... scary. in his own way. but so is madonna! and ares!!" another manic little giggle.
ahuda blushes furiously. "y-you are too! don't count yourself out! you're... you're probably more cuter than them all!!" she laughs breathlessly. if she'd been in her normal mind, she would never have been caught saying those words - if she'd been at home, and with her "safe" friends.
but she isn't, and she's here under the stars, drunk. she doesn't know what to think about that, so she moves on instead. ooh, moving on. isn't that what they've all been doing these days? all they've been doing? "who's... who's neo? don't know that name."
"i'm sure!! that they are!!“ karimi doesn't even know what she's yelling about anymore at this point. something... is it important? there's something important going on. something that she needs to be attending to right now. what was it? what could it possibly be?
"hehehe i know i am!! probably!!" maybe her buzz is going to her head. maybe it's the warmth of spring. either way, karimi can't seem to stop giggling.
neo's name jolts her back into reality for a moment. neo... the friend who probably still hated her for everything that she hadn't done. wonderful, capable neo who probably didn't have the time for her anymore. not when she had such grand plans to be putting into motion.
"doesn't matter - dun care anymore. i'm done with caring about...people who don't care about me." she can't cry - won't cry. instead, she opts to smash her lips against ahuda's awkwardly. as if it meant anything. as if it would make her any less alone. nette
pity, ahuda zones out of it while karimi talks. she could have sworn she didn't have that much to drink. really. cross her heart and hope to die. wait, no. she doesn't wanna die. not yet.
she's startled out of her thoughts by karimi's awkward kiss on the lips. it's unexpected of course, and she doesn't exactly know how to respond.
YCZPOelX <50 kisses back >50 is sober enough not to 50 ....idek
only bad things happen when you're drunk and kissing, she hears her mother's voice saying, and it's enough to snap the woman out of her thoughts. gently, she pushes karimi away by the shoulders, but her hands are fumbling. fuck, the alcohol must be going to her head. "not.. not now. you don't mean it. not really." at least, she doesn't think karimi does. "you're drunk. i'm drunk. we're both d-drunk. fuck, karimi, we shouldn't be doing this. how much've you h-had... to drink, anyway?"
it was a quiet night, a mixed crowd in the bar as ahuda nurses a drink on a stool off to the side. normally she'd be more careful than to drink anything stronger than a glass or two of wine; nowadays, though, she simply wants to knock back a drink and lose herself in the haze.
